


Stitches

by gazeteur



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 01:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11567190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gazeteur/pseuds/gazeteur
Summary: In which fashion designer Alina runs a freelance personal shopper service for menswear and you already know who is going to be an asshole about this.





	Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> Alarkling Modern AU. Or, the PersonalShopper!Alina and OwnerOfALackingWardrobe!Darkling AU
> 
> Standalone for now but I Have Ideas.

Alina is mildly annoyed.

Perched at her desk and swallowed by a knitted scarf-cape hybrid (heating in the studio or much-needed materials for her collection, the answer is clear to her), she considers the profile she’s pulled up on the site. This client is the newest, but also the biggest source of her headache so far, driving her up her studio wall. _A. Morozova,_ his profile reads, before tapering away to nothing. All the fields she’s conveniently provided, left unfilled. No contact information, either.

“Mildly” is perhaps too limp of a word. She’s thought this over, ripping textiles and marking fabric a little too harshly throughout the day; until the infuriating thought of _parcel after parcel of all those clothes returned, unworn, with nary a remark!_ caused her to carve the tailor’s chalk harder into the linen than she intended, breaking it.

She’d dropped everything at her work table, half-stomped to the other desk pushed up right against the window, and began drafting an email dripping with polite niceties. _Let’s work this out with a meeting in person._ Work this out? Really? She’d rather fight him or, slightly more realistically, slam the door in his face if he shows up for it. Promptly delete his account and pretend all of this never happened.

Of course, there are greater tasks at hand, like her overdue collection, languishing in a contained mess—half-dressed mannequins and fabrics extensively, if roughly, mapped out with a precise hand.

But this one.

Everyone else she worked with on this service had been easy, Alina thinks, so maybe that’s why this one has been especially hard? It’s not to say there were no hiccups here and there in the past, with bad fits or the rare oddball accessory—Alina tries her best, but she’s never been great at picking them.

Her memory drifts to other, more peaceable clients, like a globe-trotting nature photographer who once called—totally out of the blue—and asked if she could source something from his hometown, Keramzin, maybe? Or another one, N—his name escapes her—who is _loud. The grander the better,_ she remembers the quip on his profile. She wrestled a snake-patterned belt into his last parcel before she sent it on its way, to a gushing email and an invitation to dinner, sometime?

 _Morozova, and not much else._ Alina considers the name, a hand flitting from the pencil tucked behind her ear, to the halo-like hairpin bunning up her hair. It’s gaudy, only because there is nothing else. Genya made that for her last Halloween, for that strange party-slash-fashion-school-reunion themed around—

Cursor hovering over the “send” button, Alina is suddenly aware of footsteps echoing in the high-ceilinged studio that are not her own.

A squeak of shoes, and a man, dressed all in black, appears in the doorway with a box under his arm.

His eyes, grey and unrelenting as winter, scan the space, drifting to the worktable piled high with scraps of fabric and working up to the gabled roof, before returning back down to pin her to her seat.

And Alina is sharply aware, in the drawn-out time that transpires for the stranger to take in her studio, she’s been scanning him, and only him. Lingering on the graceful yet severe planes of his face, a pale counterpoint to the black of his suit.

As Alina racks her brain for a forgotten appointment; a model casting maybe, by the devastating looks of him—

He answers one of the many questions written in her eyes before she can speak.

“I let myself in,” he says, not an excuse but simply an explanation.

It’s not the right question, and he knows it. Alina feels a flush creeping into cheeks. “May… I help you?” Her words trail off as he approaches. Embarrassment is quickly forgotten—replaced by a scowl—when she sees him set the parcel down on her desk, the very one she sent out a few days earlier with a prayer and a curse muttered in the same breath.

“I would like to return these.”

She knows exactly who he is, the fabled Aleksander Morozova who’s currently ruining her customer satisfaction rating by not doing a damn thing.

Alina clicks her inbox away discreetly, pulling up other work on top of it. “How nice, I was just thinking of setting something up so we could discuss what you like, style-wise.” In her head: _do you even like anything?_

“Something like this.”

At what point, exactly, has he taken a seat next to her? Alina freezes at the sudden proximity as Aleksander gestures at the screen, now filled with sketches she’s roughed out earlier this morning. Close up, he smells faintly of ash, with a hint of earth—dark moss and undergrowth. She can’t decide if it’s comforting or dubious.

“They’re just patterns, for a new collection. They’re not done,” Alina says quickly. She wonders if she’s scrambling for an excuse to decline his business or to get him to move away. Or both.

Cufflinks—inlaid eclipses—flash in sunlight as Aleksander’s hand nears the screen, ghosting across a pattern. One she considers particularly sharply cut. “That one, in black.”

The word, plus his dark suit, and down to his very, very expensive black wingtips, from the sound they made when he strode across the floor: things click swiftly in Alina’s head.

Alina resists the urge to snort. Instead her head tilts, trying again to say something borderline amicable. “You could have said it beforehand, y’know. In the form. Preferred style, colour palettes. Pinterest boards. Whatever.”

“I could have.” He agrees so easily it disarms her. “But that would mean not being able to meet you in person, Alina.”

He’s so close, a presence fighting for attention with her thoughts. And the way he said her name.

Her nails tap on the counter. “I’ll need to craft them from scratc—“

“You will find money to be not an issue, Alina.”

There it is again: her name, dropped like a familiarity, but with an edge. He’s really serious about this. Alina resists the surging sensation of offence bubbling inside her, focusing on the idea of his handing her a blank cheque, hey.

And the thought of dressing _him._

All infuriating, but persuasive, thoughts.

Alina chews her lip, before retrieving the pencil behind her ear and scribbling intermittently on a piece of scrap paper. Words fall, imperceptible, from her lips like a chant.

All the while Aleksander makes no move to leave or to chase, hand rested casually and yet so close to her constantly moving one. Alina is suddenly self-conscious of the ridiculous barrette haloing her hair.

Finally— “I’ll make it in black, yes,” she sounds out the words carefully, angling the paper towards him. “But on my terms.”

It’s shooting high, she knows, but the money will greatly bolster her collection budget if he says yes. But Alina will not compromise her creative vision.

Aleksander traces the ragged edge of the paper, never coming close to the figure she’s underlined. “Can we agree on a percentage?”

She raises an eyebrow. “On the cost?”

“No, on the colour.”

Both eyebrows drop.

But he isn’t listening anymore, pushing himself off the stool, not before flicking his gaze back to something curled loosely near the edge of the table. Alina follows it and understands: an eye roll dawning on her features as she makes a grab for the measuring tape.

  


* * *

  


She chances upon mentions—glimpses—of him, in passing: gracing the Technology section of the Times, chronicling his supposedly strategic task of acquiring companies up and down the Ravkan coast.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter, months down the road, when she’s taken to leaving her mark on him.

A flash of gold thread lining the inside of a blazer.

A slim zipper, purposefully left unfinished, snaking its way through black wool—catching the light with its champagne hue.

Ties, cufflinks, and shoes—all shot through with some sort of gold.

Or silvery white, if she wishes to test his adherence to their agreement.

But nothing gets sent back.

After weeks of silence, a parcel appears on her doorstep.

It’s a jacket, per his exact specifications, but Alina has cheated the exterior fabric a few shades lighter, to a deep Prussian blue—if it catches the light just right.

Something falls to the floor when Alina lifts the jacket from the box. The object makes the crisp slide of paper as she picks it up. It’s perfectly folded, enclosing a light cursive penned in resolute black—a hand that reminds her of closely spaced trees reaching up towards some perceived light.

_Exquisite. Perhaps navy for the lining as well, to match the outside?_


End file.
